A strike by the MiskElectroTrans Company, as a result of which no trolleybuses and trams operated today in Kharkiv, is a one-day action that could be stepped up in the near future, union officials have said.
As a correspondent of Interfax-Ukraine reported, on Monday the aboveground city electric transport of Kharkiv was stopped in a protest over unpaid wages.
Employees of the MiskElectroTrans Company have demanded UAH 30 million in back wages. The debt has been run up because the city budget doesn’t receive the necessary compensation from the state budget for transporting passengers who qualify for free travel.
The local authorities have been trying to solve this problem for the last several years, and according to City Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin, the debt of the central budget now exceeds UAH 160 million. In connection with this, the authorities of Kharkiv support the demands of the MiskElectroTrans Company staff.
The chairman of the company’s trade union, Liudmyla Zakharchenko, told journalist on Tuesday, that MiskElectroTrans would resume work on September 29, but according to a decision adopted earlier by the company’s staff, if the government doesn’t solve the question of compensation for the transportation of privileged passengers by October 4, the enterprise will announce an indefinite strike.
